


welcome to our new world

by TouchTheExoplanets



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, Quarantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22540453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TouchTheExoplanets/pseuds/TouchTheExoplanets
Summary: Capable has the Citadel, Cheedo has the Wretched, Toast has the War Boys, Dag has her plants and her daughter. Furiosa needs a mission, a goal,something.She needs to do more than exist, because existing ishell.Word Count: 10,058
Relationships: Furiosa/Max Rockatansky
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52
Collections: Mad for ‘Straya, Tells of the Wasteland





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "We Are Strong" by Jonathan Buchanan and Michael Lister.
> 
> Written for the Mad for 'Straya Create-A-Thon.

Furiosa stops waiting for him to come back on the four hundredth day. She doesn’t need him, she reminds herself. She doesn’t need anyone.

(The nauseating truth is that she _doesn’t_ need him. She _wants_ him.)

At first, it was easy. She had plenty to keep her busy. She’d had to heal, take inventory, assign jobs, prepare for the survivors of the War Party to come roaring around the mountains. Later, after they’d starved the War Party into submission, she’d had to gain the allegiance of Gastown and the Bullet Farm through an exhausting combination of bribes, threats, and promises. She’d had to bring up and train Wretched to replace the War Boys who’d died chasing her across the desert. She’d quelled two mutinies, killed eleven rebels, and survived five attempts on her life, the last of which left her bedridden with a broken ankle for two weeks.

Above all and always, she’d had to protect the girls. The newest generation of the Vuvalini. The only thing that made all this worth it.

But on the four hundredth day, she wakes from a restless half-sleep and realizes that there’s nothing to do. The Citadel is far from its former economic and political glory, but it’s running on its own power now. Its citizens know their jobs and their rights, what they can do and what Furiosa will kill them for. Before today, she would have found the girls, helped them with whatever they need, but the strange truth is that they don’t need her. Not anymore.

Toast was the first to find her place. The girls had initially spent days with Furiosa, taking inventory and making plans. Toast couldn’t do it. Couldn’t sit still, couldn’t force herself to read and discuss for hours on end. She stormed out one day, found herself among the War Boys, and never really left. Seeing Toast among them (knowing how _she_ had been treated among them) twisted Furiosa’s gut into knots, but even the older War Boys treat her well. She earned their respect the same way she’d earned Furiosa’s, by being tough and smart and ready to rip out throats with her teeth if the need arose. 

Dag has, unsurprisingly, taken to experimenting with the seeds left her by the Keeper. She spends most of her days up on the terrace, pale hair and skin protected by layers of cloth, planting and weeding and caring for the green children in her care. It’s getting harder for her these days, with Joe’s newest prize in her care. (“My _daughter_ ,” she always says with a fierce glint in her eye, but even now, Furiosa struggles to see anything but the sick spread of Joe’s rot.) But she insists on climbing the stairs every morning, with Almond in a sling across her chest. The other terrace workers were wary of her at first, but everyone can see how much she loves the plants, and that is something they share. 

Cheedo worked on the terraces too, for a time. There were weeks on end when she would start panicking if Dag was beyond arm’s reach. But time went on, the days grew calmer. Cheedo began preferring to stay inside, to avoid the blistering heat of the terraces. She walked with Capable from room to room in the Citadel, talking and connecting and growing. And when Mel started talking about wanting to pass on her knowledge (“I’m an old woman, you need what I got”), Cheedo learned all she could - medicine, history, mechanics - and passed it on. Nowadays, she walks among the Wretched on the ground, healing where she can and teaching what she knows. Furiosa walked with her for a while, for protection. “ _We are not things_ ,” she whispers to the sick and miserable. “ _We are not things_.”

Capable can never settle. She rides with Furiosa and Toast on every supply run, speaks to the leadership they’ve set up at Gastown and the Bullet Farm, checks in. She wants too much, Furiosa thinks. If Cheedo has picked up Angharad’s _we are not things_ , Capable has picked up _no unnecessary killing._ If she had her way, murder would be forbidden. It’s extreme, but her calm competence sways their enemies and reassures their allies. Each of the girls has become something of a symbol in the factions they’ve chosen, and they all defer to Capable. It’s Capable who listens to the complaints of the treadmillers, the milkers, the blackthumbs, the kitchen and terrace workers. It’s Capable who ensures Cheedo has water and herbs and food for the Wretched, Capable who ensures that the blackthumbs fix the water lines for the terraces, Capable who soothes the tension between the V8 fanatics and the new order.

Furiosa had thought they would need her for that. She had been so ready to beat cooperation into their brains until they complied or their skulls split. And then the girls found another way. A way that’s _working_. 

So now she’s restless, irritable, tense, and there is nothing to distract her from the gaping hole in her center. She thought it would heal if she just left it be, but it has only grown. Like her steel core is rusting away, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

“Stop pacing,” Mel orders. Furiosa tosses her a glare, but she doesn’t even look up from her sewing. It’s a Vuvalini blanket, a style Furiosa remembers from her childhood. Seeing it only makes her pulse with pain. “Have you eaten?”

“I’m not hungry,” Furiosa says. She glares around the room. She was never allowed here in the skull’s mouth. This place was only for Joe and a few trusted others. She still can’t quite shake the feeling that she will be punished for standing so close to the water levers.

Mel moves and Furiosa reacts, pivoting and slicing her prosthetic through the air. An apple, bright and precious, hits the ground hard and rolls. Mel twitches out her foot and stops it. Furiosa’s back is tight, her muscles primed for a fight. The rush of adrenaline to her brain is so fast it makes her dizzy. Mel either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

“It’s just a fruit,” she says, mild. She reaches down and picks it up. This time she makes sure she has Furiosa’s eyes before she tosses it. “Eat the apple, child.” She sits back in her chair and returning to her stitching. “Then go make yourself useful. This blanket is for Dag’s child and I will not have you spoiling it.”

Furiosa forces herself to breathe through the tension. She can’t be here. Not in this room, with a forbidden fruit in her hand, and a woman who thinks she knows everything. 

She drops the apple and walks out.

The corridors are mercifully cooler and darker, bringing some semblance of calm to the ringing in her head. She used to walk these corridors on the worst days under Joe’s rule. Even when she was beaten bloody and bruised, even when she was limping, even when she had just lost her arm, walking these corridors was a reminder that she wasn’t locked in anymore. She was never going to be locked in again.

Furiosa walks faster. She passes people, she knows. Some of them cringe away when they see her coming. Some turn to watch her storm past. She doesn’t look at them. She doesn’t know where she’s going, or what she’s doing. Isn’t that the whole fucking problem?

She needs a mission. A goal. She needs to do more than just _exist_ , because existing is _hell_.

Before she really processes what she’s doing, she’s grabbed a white-painted Pup by the scruff of his neck and tossed him aside. He yelps, the garage around her echoes with questions and cries and _noise_. She slams the hood shut on whatever the Pup had been tinkering with and gets behind the wheel. The engine starts. She’s on the lift.

“Let me down,” she growls at the treadmill operator.

He shifts nervously. “Cheedo said not to,” he says. “Said you made them Wretched nervous-”

Furiosa doesn’t know where the rifle came from. Doesn’t know where she picked it up. Doesn’t know where she got the ammo. All she knows is it’s locked and loaded and on her shoulder.

“ _Furiosa, no!_ ”

Something slams into her shoulder and the shot goes wide. Furiosa reacts, hits wildly. Her elbow connects. Someone goes down. Bright red on the ground.

Something about the particular shade of that red jars her.

Slowly, Furiosa’s vision hazes back into focus. Capable is already rising from the ground, eyes steady, bruise blooming on her jaw. The treadmill operator is on his knees, cowering, but whole and alive. 

The rifle slips through her fingers and hits the lift with a loud _clang_.

“What’s wrong, Furiosa?” Capable asks, calm. She’s grimy, wearing work pants and an oil-stained shirt. She was probably in the garage when Furiosa exploded in. 

Furiosa lifts her head and looks into the garage. The rev-heads are frozen and staring, some of them holding trembling Pups. One Pup is nursing a bleeding head. The blackthumb holding a rag to his head glares at Furiosa. Nobody would have dared to glare like that under Joe. But they feel protected, now. They know that Capable will look after them.

(They don’t need her anymore.)

Furiosa stoops and picks up the rifle again, letting its familiar weight ground her. She sees Capable stiffen. 

“I’m going for a drive,” Furiosa says. 

Capable looks at her a long moment, a crease between her eyebrows. Then she nods and steps off the lift. “Go,” she says. “Come back when you’re ready.”

Furiosa jerks her chin at the treadmill operator. He gets to his feet, legs trembling, but he levels her a defiant stare. It is only when Capable nods at him that he pulls the lever to lower the lift.

This is the new world that Furiosa murdered her crew and decimated the Vuvalini to reach. She has no power here.

As soon as the lift touches the sand, she opens the throttle and roars toward the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have two exams tomorrow! Please send help.


	2. Chapter 2

Tents crowd each other, built sturdy and low to the ground to withstand sandstorms, clustered near the base of the Citadel cliffs for shelter from the sun and wind. They’re made of canvas, painstakingly and lovingly stitched together and stretched over a frame of old vehicle parts. Children run in the narrow alleys between the homes. They were once skeletal and scared, but with the new hand-operated water pumps and secure glass greenhouses, they are filling out and growing fast. Scavengers from the waste have noticed their softer bellies and come to take, but under the careful guidance of the experienced warmongers above, the people here have joined together to protect their own. 

They are still hungry, still desperate, but they aren’t wretched anymore, and they have exactly one person to thank for that.

This very moment, she is tucked into one of the smaller tents, feeling the pulse of a feverish child. Her dark hair is tucked up into a scarf made of light, delicate fabric that was once white as War Boy paint. She used to wear that white cloth, wrap it around her shoulders like armor. It reminded her that she, as a treasure, as a trophy, was protected. Now she knows that she is not a thing. She is not his anymore, so she turned his shackles bright colors with dyes from her sister’s plants, and now she wears it as her crown.

The child coughs miserably. Cheedo hums a comfort and rubs his back, but her forehead is lined with worry. “He should stay here and rest,” she says, quiet, to the child’s father. The father nods. “Make sure he drinks water and sleeps well. I’ll be back tomorrow with something to help.” The father nods again and gestures a few times. Many of the ground people do not speak, not really, but Cheedo has learned to recognize their signs.

“I know,” she says in response. “I’ll talk to my sisters. Whistle for me if there’s a change.”

The father touches his fingers to his heart, thanking her.

“You’re welcome,” Cheedo says. She touches his shoulder and leaves the tent. This is the latest in a long line of ill patients that she’s visited over the past week. In the months she’s been looking after these people, she hasn’t seen anything like this. At first the disease visited only the old and the young, but this child is not so young. He has passed his five thousandth day. He should be strong and full of life, but instead he is cold and trembling even in the desert heat, his air passages blocked with viscous fluid and his body wracked by coughs.

And Cheedo doesn’t know how to fix him. She hates that she doesn’t know how to fix him. And she hates that nobody else does either.

When she is lifted back up into the Citadel, the two remaining Vuvalini are waiting for her.

“Still sick?” Mel asks, falling into step beside her.

Cheedo nods, exhausted from a day of examinations and infuriatingly useless comfort. She keeps her voice low as she passes through the garage. “You were right. Even the strong are sick now.” She spots Capable and Toast, who quickly make their excuses to the blackthumbs and run to catch up.

“I’m telling you, it’s the flu,” Ria says, voice sharp with worry. “And without a vaccine-”

“Shut it,” Mel snaps. “The last thing we need is you causing a panic. It could just be a cold.”

“How many has it killed?” This is Toast, flipping a knife between her fingers with the ease of long practice. 

Cheedo shrugs her shoulders helplessly as they make their way up the stairs. “The ground people don’t like telling me when one of them dies. They know I don’t like what they do with the bodies.”

“It’s barbaric,” Ria snarls, suddenly vicious.

“Meat is food,” Toast retorts. “None of us like it, but how can we tell them not to eat when they’re starving?”

“We can’t spare any more grain,” Capable says, rubbing at her head. “We can barely feed everybody up here as it is-”

“Nobody’s blaming you,” Cheedo interjects. They pass the massive Vault door and the blackthumbs in their welding masks as they cut it apart. That door will never be locked again. Toast spits on the ground as they pass it.

They enter the Vault. The afternoon sun is slanting in through the glass, and the place is cluttered with their individual projects - a pile of scrap parts in the corner, a tiny garden in the center of the pool, a stack of books by the doorway. Dag is there, sitting with her feet in the pool, washing the dirt from her hands and feet.

It's is still a sickening place, in many ways. But Cheedo likes the idea of recycling the horrific to make something new and beautiful. She did it with her scarf, and she will do it with this place too. It’s already better with the door off and the place thoroughly cleaned. Every day it reeks less of him.

“We’re getting off the subject,” Mel says as Cheedo sets down her bag of medical supplies and kneels to clean her hands in the pool. Toast flops down next to Dag with a frustrated sigh. Capable pulls up chairs for Mel and Ria, careful to tiptoe around the words OUR BABIES WILL NOT BE WARLORDS. They’ll have to repaint soon, Cheedo notes idly, if they want those words to stay.

“It has killed people, then?” Capable asks, settling next to Cheedo as Toast fills Dag in.

Cheedo shakes the water off her hands and sits back. “I think so. People have gone missing. At least five, probably more.”

“We can’t let it up here,” Ria says. “It’ll ravage this place-”

“Hand off the panic button, Ria,” Mel snaps again, “or you can walk out of this room.”

Cheedo doesn’t know what a panic button is, but Ria crosses her arms and goes silent.

“Now,” says Mel, quieter, “I’ve been through all your medical stock and you don’t have the supplies to deal with an outbreak of any sort.”

“Bartertown?” Toast says, looking to Capable. “I can make a run-”

“We’d have to negotiate with the Buzzards for a path through their lands,” Capable says. “And we promised Bullet Farm and Gastown a week’s notice before any supply runs.”

“If this is an outbreak, a week’s too long to wait,” Mel warns.

“Besides, who says Bartertown’s gonna have what you need?” Dag says, Almond cradled protectively in her arms. 

“We need numbers,” Toast decides. “We need to know how serious this is.”

“And we need to tell the others,” Capable says.

Cheedo nods agreement, but Ria breaks back into the conversation. “If you can’t handle my reasonable concern-” She cuts an annoyed look at Mel. “-then you’re not ready for the panic this will cause if you tell everyone else.”

Capable goes from concerned to furious in a matter of moments. “They have a right to know!”

Cheedo reaches over and hooks a comforting hand around her sister’s elbow. “Not only that,” she says mildly, “but if we want to prevent the spread of infection, we need to encourage people to stay away from the ground for now.”

“What about you, Cheedo?” Dag asks. “How’ve you been feeling?”

“I’m not sick, if that’s what you’re asking. Just tired.”

“You should stay away from the ground too,” Ria warns. “You’re more likely to get sick than any of us, and if you bring it up here-”

“That’s it,” Mel says, standing. She grabs Ria’s arm none too kindly and all but drags her out of the room. “If you were an initiate I’d have you hauling water till your arms drop off. You’re one of us but so help me if I hear one more fearmongering quip out of you . . .” Her words fade away as they disappear from the room.

The girls exchange glances, eyes wide.

“Guess sisters don’t always get along,” Dag mutters.

Toast snorts. “We know that well enough.”

The room falls silent for a time, broken only by the quiet lapping of water as Dag reaches forward and plucks weeds out of the small plot in center of the pool.

“Could Furiosa make the run, if it comes to that?” Cheedo asks. “A small car, quick and strong enough to get through the Buzzard lands?”

Capable and Toast exchange a look.

“What did she do this time?” Dag asks flatly.

“Almost shot Tentpole,” Capable says, scrubbing at her forehead. Her red hair flops over her face, falling out of its knot. Cheedo reaches over and unties the knot, then starts weaving hair into a long plait. Capable turns to give her a better angle.

“This can’t keep happening,” Toast says. “The change of leadership is hard enough-”

“The change of leadership wouldn’t have happened without her,” Capable says, an irritated reminder.

“It’s been hundreds of days,” Dag says. “She isn’t getting better. She’s getting worse.”

“We’ll lose the trust of the War Boys,” Toast warns. “Cheedo’s already said the Wretched-”

“-the ground people-”

“-fukushima, Cheedo, the ground people- scuttle back into their holes- fine, _tents_ \- whenever they see her coming. It sets her back for days.”

“She’s kami-crazy.”

“She’s not!”

The voices of her sisters rise as Cheedo finishes Capable’s plait and ties it off. She listens and splashes her toes in the pool and thinks. When there’s finally a lull in the conversation, she says, “She’s not well. There must be something we can do to help her.”

They go silent.

“The only one who ever helped her was Max,” Dag says matter-of-factly.

“They helped each other,” Capable says. “We all saw it.”

“What does it matter? He’s gone.” Toast stands and tucks her knife in her belt. 

“Maybe we could find him.”

Toast rolls her eyes. “Sure, Cheedo. If you were an animal in a man’s body, and you were free to run wild in the waste for four hundred days, where would you go?”


	3. Chapter 3

Furiosa’s head clears almost as soon as she’s on the road. On instinct, she’s scanning the horizon (clear), counting her bullets (four in the rifle, six in the revolver), estimating the guzzoline in her tank (not much), and the reliability of the car (nil). She doesn’t know why this car was in the shop, but its engine sounds fine, its acceleration good, its steering steady. 

(She really hopes it wasn’t because of the brakes.)

On instinct, she’s aimed it right down the center of the last road, and she doesn’t care enough to turn it anywhere else. Maybe she’ll stop in at Gastown or the Bullet Farm, pretend she’s supposed to be there to inspect the leadership or check inventory, even though the thought of being around other people still makes her kind of sick. 

She scans the horizon again, pretending she’s not hoping for an attack. But it’s still clear.

She needs something to _do_.

Joe always had something for her to do. She doesn’t wish him back - if anything, she wishes he were somehow more dead, dead from her life, dead from her body, dead from her memory. But at least life under him was clear. Survive. Stay alive, and one day she would have the strength to fight back.

Then, one day, she did. And she won.

And _now what?_

Furiosa slams on the brakes so hard that the tires squeal against the pavement. She lets the violent motion jerk her forward and slam her back, welcoming the pain of her skull against the worn headrest, her teeth in her lip, her spine whipping unnaturally. She scrambles out of the car as if it’s on fire. The afternoon sun slants down across her face and into her eyes. 

She tries to rein in her inexplicable twitchy anger. She paces around the car, the hot pavement warming the soles of her boots, but she can’t shake it. She wants to run from it, fight it, face it head on, but it’s _in_ her, burning at her chest, the friction of tires spinning uselessly in the sand.

She’s weak now. Is that it? She spent all her life fighting Joe and now all that’s left is her slow slide to death. She’s seen it happen with dozens of War Boys, the ones who hadn’t been lucky enough to die historic.

She doesn’t even have the privilege to die historic. There’s nothing to _die_ for anymore. There’s nobody to fight, nothing to die for, and certainly nothing to live for.

There’s just nothing.

The friction bubbles up in her chest and rips itself out of her throat in a guttural scream. Furiosa’s body contracts and she punches, _hard_ , shattering the driver’s side window of her car. Little pinpricks of fire erupt on her knuckles, like sand whipping against stone, and she watches blood begin to drip down her hand in a sort of haze.

If she had any sense she’d have hit with her prosthetic.

Her legs give out beneath her and she collapses onto the ground. She leans her head against the body of the car and closes her eyes.

If she had any sense she would have run when the fool did instead of staying here to rust away.

Furiosa can feel vibrations of approaching vehicles through the ground. She can hear them. Out of old habit, she counts two assault bikes, coming from the other direction.

If she had any sense she would have gone _with_ the fool. Maybe then she wouldn’t be about to get killed.

She lets her eyes crack open as the bikes grumble to a stop. Each one is manned by two Boys. They’re dressed like Gastown Boys - important ones, too, if the masks hanging at their hips are any indication. She closes her eyes again.

“She dead?”

“Bag of Nails, dead, right. Use your fucking head.”

“She’s got blood all over the fucking place, you think she’s _napping?_ ”

“Go poke her then, schlanger, see if you keep your head.”

“She ain’t even got a gun.”

“Then you got nothing to be scared of.” And then a yelp and a few disjointed steps, like someone just got shoved.

Furiosa mostly just wants to sleep now, but if anyone touches her, she’ll snap their necks.

A few more shuffling steps in her direction. “Oi, Nails,” says the crackling voice of a boy pretending he’s a man. “You in there?”

Furiosa opens her eyes. The kid startles halfway through picking his foot up to nudge her and jerks away so fast he nearly tumbles to the ground.

“Oh fuck, alive,” comments an older Boy as the young one scrambles back to them.

Another Boy rolls his eyes. “Most mediocre crew I ever seen,” he grumbles. Then he shifts his attention to Furiosa. “Bag of Nails, you’re breaking treaty.”

Furiosa sighs and gets to her feet, every limb like lead. She reaches through the now-windowless driver’s side door and picks up her revolver, ignoring the blood still dripping from her fingers. 

The Gastown Boy is still talking. “-supposed to give one week’s notice before any runs so that we- hey, hey, hey!” He finally notices the revolver in Furiosa’s hand. If she were planning on killing them, she could’ve done it three times over by now.

“I’m not on a run,” Furiosa says, voice raspy from her scream. “You see a rig?”

“Drop the gun,” says the youngest, the kid. She regards him, the revolver down at her side, loose in her bloody hand. He’s got his sawed-off pointed at her face, and his hands are shaking so hard he might pull the trigger completely by accident.

She doesn’t waste any words on him.

“Why are you so close to Gastown, then?” asks one of the older Boys.

“For the view,” Furiosa replies. 

“I said, drop the gun!”

“You got views back at your tower,” says a Gastown Boy. “Head on back.”

“You’ll bring Buzzards down,” adds another. “They circle when they see numbers.”

“I didn’t bring the numbers.”

“ _Drop the gun!”_

Several things happen very fast, and all at once.

She hears the sharp report of a sniper rifle, and the kid’s head explodes all over her. 

A huge engine roars to life, very close. It must’ve been waiting just behind the dunes.

Something tugs at her chest, a sensation both familiar and unfamiliar, a distant memory of understanding and cooperation so effortless she didn’t once consider the possibility of betrayal.

And all of a sudden, a fire flares back to life, and her mind is as sharp and clear as fresh water.

Furiosa dives into her car and starts up the engine. It roars to life; she spins the wheel and fangs it towards the sound of the sniper rifle. She sees the Buzzard vehicle - a massive thing, a town on wheels - crest the largest dune and bear down towards her little car. More gunshots ring out and she hunkers down, sheltering her head as much as she can behind the steering column. She tosses the revolver aside and grabs her rifle, steering with her knees as she squints through the scope. (Four.) She finds the windshield and takes her chance, but the shot goes wild without the time to aim, and she’s out of time. (Three.) She grabs the steering wheel and wrenches it to the side just in time for the car to wheel out of the way of the Buzzard monstrosity. It slips and slides on the steep dune, but it manages well enough, and Furiosa wonders for the dozenth time why this surprisingly capable car was in the shop.

The Gastown Boys are on their bikes and fanging it back towards town, but they’ll never make it. As Furiosa watches, the Buzzard monstrosity spits out a smaller car ( _How?_ ) to give pursuit. And then she has to stop watching, because it spits out another smaller car which turns towards her. Furiosa lines up another shot, breathing slow. 

The Something tugs at her chest again, so hard it turns her head. There’s another vehicle racing over the dunes, getting closer. It’s old but fast, and she thinks she’s seen it before, but she doesn’t dare to consider-

By the time she refocuses the Buzzard car is upon her.

It _slams_ into her, crumpling her engine block like it’s made of fabric. Her head hits the steering wheel, _hard_. Spikes punch through the windshield, and she yells as one strikes her prosthetic and pins her to the seat, torquing her shoulder hard. Her rifle hits her in the chin. Her mouth fills with blood and her vision flickers alarmingly.

The Buzzards chatter in their language, clambering out of their car to investigate the wreckage. She turns her head as much as she can between the spikes, tracking them. One come over to her door, sees her eyes watching him, yelps something in its language, fumbles for its weapon. Furiosa’s hand closes around her revolver (Six.), and _bang_ . (Five.) The first Buzzard drops to the ground. The second Buzzard screams and points something at her. She takes a chance with the distance and aims through the window. _Bang. Bang. Bang._ (Four. Three. Two.) It, too, drops dead.

And, well, fuck. Now she’s pinned.

The Buzzard monstrosity is turning back around towards her. It appears to have no more cars to spit out, but she counts at least five Buzzards on the monstrosity itself, and they’re gunning for her. (Why are they gunning for her? What are they doing on the road?)

Tug again, and the other vehicle comes crashing over the dune, and she can’t pretend she doesn’t know who it is. 

Max’s car fangs it directly for the Buzzard monstrosity. Only a breath from collision, it turns neatly into a drift, sliding sideways down the sand dunes, tires spinning for purchase. Furiosa counts one, two, three black specks thrown from the car. They explode in near-perfect synchrony two moments later, and just like that, the Buzzard monstrosity is no more. 

She forgot how good he is.

Fukushima, her shoulder hurts. She closes her eyes and breathes through the pain, focusing on the parts of her that aren’t screaming. There is a surprising number of them. The little car she stole from that War Pup will never run again, but it protected her. She’s used to far more post-battle injuries than this.

“Hm. Hey.”

Her breaths shudder to a stop. She opens her eyes.

Max looks as wrecked as she feels. He’s dirty and exhausted, face gaunt from more than malnourishment. He wears the same jacket, but sand has worn it thin, and there’s a hole in the shoulder crusted with dried blood that isn’t old enough for the wound to be anywhere near healed. He shifts from foot to foot like he’d rather be anywhere but here. But he’s looking at her like she’s water and he’s a man dying of thirst, and he hasn’t run yet.

Furiosa reaches her good hand out to him and he clasps it like he did on the salt flats four hundred days ago.

“Fool,” she rasps, and he almost smiles.


	4. Chapter 4

Cheedo is reading one of Miss Giddy’s books on medicinal plants, leaning by the water levers in the mouth of the skull, when she hears Toast say, “Oh _fuck_ , is that _Max?_ ”

She steals Toast’s binoculars and scrambles to look over the edge. A car sits on the road, waiting for the lift to lower. In the darkening light, she can’t see the man standing beside the car, but his profile stirs some dusty memory. It could be him. But why would it be?

Then Cheedo spots the figure on the other side of the car. “ _What happened to Furiosa?_ ” she cries, shoving the binoculars back at Toast and running for the stairs. “Get the others!” she calls over her shoulder.

A few War Boys and other workers are wandering the halls when she flies past them. They call questions after her, but she ignores them, pausing only long enough to grab her medical bag from the Vault before she continues down to the garage. She arrives just in time to see the lift click into place.

“Hi, Max,” she says, because it’s definitely him, as she goes straight to Furiosa.

It’s hard to know where to start.

“Can I touch you?” Cheedo asks, because that’s always the first question she asks.

Furiosa nods wearily, and Cheedo goes to work. It’s not as bad as she thought. The blood encrusted on her clothes seems to have mostly come from her knuckles and a small cut on her forehead. There are no gunshot wounds, no broken bones that Cheedo can tell, and, somehow, no sign of head trauma. 

The others arrive halfway through Cheedo’s careful stitches on Furiosa’s forehead. They seem very happy but unsurprised to see Max. Toast must have told them.

“What happened?” Capable asks.

“Buzzards,” explains Furiosa, sounding exhausted.

“On the road?” Toasts asks, sharp. Furiosa nods. “What? Why? How many? What were they after?”

“She’s had a long day,” Cheedo says.

“We need to _know_ , Cheedo-”

She huffs out a frustrated breath and opens her mouth, but the sound of a low rumble silences them both.

“There were, mm. Eleven. Don’t know what they wanted. Best guess, show of strength.”

Dag watches Max, fascinated, like she wants to cut open his skull to pick apart his brain and see what she might find. “And where have you been all this time?” she asks. He shrugs. She squints at him. He shrugs again.

“More importantly, why are you here now?” Capable asks. There’s an edge to her tone, one that Cheedo recognizes. A protectiveness. But who or what she’s protecting, Cheedo’s not sure. “You left. How are you back?”

This question seems more difficult. Cheedo listens to Max’s long pause as she continues her stitches. Furiosa is very still beneath her. “I wanted to come back,” he says at last. “Was in Gastown for, mm, long time. Heard about a lone vehicle on the road. Came to help.”

“And why are you staying?”

Cheedo’s hands still on the last stitch, and she turns to look. Max’s face is like an open wound.

“That’s enough,” Furiosa says, quiet and absolute. She stands, thanks Cheedo for her ministrations with a small nod, and walks away. Max trails behind her.

Capable and Cheedo exchange a quick look.

“Furiosa, there’s a problem,” Capable calls. Furiosa pauses but doesn’t turn around.

Capable looks to Cheedo. “The ground people are sick,” Cheedo says, choosing her words carefully. “Very sick. I sent Pups down to ask, and they say there could be as many as forty dead already.”

Furiosa whips around. “You sent Pups down? Where are they now?”

Cheedo falters. “Sleeping with the others.”

Her eyes flash. “ _Fukushima_. Come with me,” she says to Max, and heads for the hall again.

Max hesitates, glancing from Cheedo to Furiosa, and it’s that hesitation that sends cold fear flooding through Cheedo’s body. She scrambles to her feet, and dashes to block Furiosa’s path. “What are you doing?” she demands. “Where are you going?”

“To get those Pups and throw them off the lift,” Furiosa says, and the ice in her tone douses Cheedo, making her shiver. 

Cheedo’s sisters erupt into protests, moving to join her in blocking Furiosa’s progress. “I told them to go down there,” Cheedo says, reaching out, begging. “Don’t punish them, it’s my fault.”

“It’s not a punishment. Those Pups will infect everyone in the Citadel, if they haven’t already. Didn’t Mel tell you how sickness is carried?”

“Yes, but- I thought-” Tears threaten, but Cheedo wrangles them down and tries to focus. “We had to know how many had died, and the ground people won’t talk to me-”

Furiosa’s eyes pin Cheedo in place. “You?” 

With that one word, Capable and Dag push themselves in front of her, arms out, protecting. “You touch her and I’ll _skin_ you,” Dag hisses, teeth bared, tall and dangerous.

Toast grabs Cheedo’s arm. “Let’s go,” she says, low and urgent. “Come on, Cheedo, let’s get you out of here-”

“She won’t hurt me!” Cheedo protests, but Furiosa has a wild look in her eyes, and it makes her stomach turn.

“If you’re sick and infectious, you’re thrown off the lift,” Furiosa snarls. “That’s the rule-”

“ _We are not things!_ ” Capable’s eyes blaze. “We’re people, Fury, and so are those kids-”

“We kill them or they kill us!”

Cheedo’s attention is suddenly arrested by Max. He’s clearly confused, catching up, but when Capable says _kids_ he flinches so violently he staggers back a step. Furiosa turns, maybe sensing the lack of support at her shoulder, and for the first time Cheedo sees her steely resolve falter.

Max breathes hard, shoulders bowed like someone is pushing him down towards the floor. He licks his lips and tries to speak, but the only sound that escapes is a guttural grunt.

“Cheedo, no!” Toast says, but she pulls her arm out of Toast’s grasp and slips between her sisters. She passes within a hairsbreadth of Furiosa, but Furiosa doesn’t move. Cheedo kneels in front of Max.

“Here,” she says quietly, reaching into her medical bag and withdrawing a waterskin. She opens it and offers it to him. “Drink. You’re safe. Nobody will hurt you.”

It takes a moment, but he takes it, very slowly, fingers trembling like it takes more effort to do something gentle than it would be to just snap her neck. He drinks, and the tension in his shoulders gradually eases. He closes his eyes and takes a long breath. Returning to the waterskin to Cheedo, he meets her eyes and nods a little. She smiles and accepts the gesture for the gratitude that it is.

When Max straightens, he looks at Furiosa. “We don’t kill kids,” he says, forcing his voice just above a mumble. “That’s not, mm. Redemption.”

“They’ll infect everyone in the Citadel,” she repeats, but her voice is uncertain.

“You don’t know that,” Cheedo says, replacing the waterskin in her bag and standing. “I’ll isolate them. I should’ve done it before. But we’re not killing them.”

For an achingly long moment, Furiosa doesn’t say anything. Cheedo’s sisters are frozen, watching her. Toast is trembling with the effort of staying still, poised to run to Cheedo’s protection. Even Max has half-angled his body between them.

Furiosa stands alone.

Finally, after a tense infinity, she speaks, words controlled. “So if you aren’t going to kill them,” she says, “and you aren’t going to abandon them, what’s your plan?”


	5. Chapter 5

Furiosa had been ready to defend the girls against any threat. She would have thrown herself in front of bullets for them, walked through guzzoline fire for them, stood naked in a radioactive sandstorm for them. She was prepared to suffer and die to protect them and their legacy. She had _expected_ it.

What she had not expected was to be forced to confront a threat that she cannot fight. 

In the days that follow, the girls close off the Citadel to any outsiders. The supplies that Furiosa had stockpiled in case of a siege are instead being used to sustain them during the quarantine. The Wretched die in increasingly large numbers. Capable tries to forbid Cheedo from going down to care for them, until they catch her rappelling down the side of the cliff one evening and decide that they’d rather she use the lift. The girls bury themselves in their work and desperately try to think their way out of the problem.

The Pups that took the numbers do not get sick. None of the War Boys get sick. Not even Cheedo gets sick, despite being out among the Wretched every day. Maybe it’s her full-life health keeping her safe. But Mel, from whom Cheedo has learned all her medical knowledge, does. It makes Furiosa’s vision splinter whenever she thinks of Mel, feverish and shaking, alone in a room because they can’t risk anyone to care for her. One of the last of a powerful clan that she led to a slaughter.

She doesn’t understand how the sickness could have jumped through walls and thousands of Citadel denizens, only to settle on one of the last people in the world who is important to her. 

Max seems to know, but he isn’t saying.

He, too, is trapped in the quarantine. The girls won’t let him out, though Furiosa is sure he is itching to go. Another person who she has sucked into her twisted world and trapped.

He keeps busy, moving from place to place, doing whatever tasks need doing. He can do a lot. Fixing cars, cleaning weapons, these are skills she expected him to have, but he spends a day in the kitchens cooking and washing dishes, another day up on the terraces weeding with Dag, even a day with Capable transcribing old ledgers onto new paper. His handwriting is shaky but legible, and the sight of him sprawled on the floor, lip snagged on his teeth as he focuses on forming his letters, puts a strange lump in Furiosa’s throat.

She tries not to envy him. She wishes she had learned to cook when Katie offered to teach her. She wishes she didn’t have to mouth words as she read them.

She wishes she could still read Max, but the reality is that she can’t. When she first met him he was an animal, fighting for the only scraps of dignity life would still allow him. They’d helped each other. He had helped her hurt Joe the only way she knew how, and she’d seen him change as the days passed, every day a little calmer, every day a little more verbose. It was like one of those old fairytales her mother had read to her as a child in the Green Place. A beast turning into a man.

Now she’s the one unhinged, and he sits on the floor with a Vuvalini blanket wrapped around his shoulders and Almond snoozing on his chest, listening intently as Dag complains about her infant.

(He still can’t sleep for more than five hours at a time. He still wakes up in a panic, fist raised. She knows he’s not healed, but at least he’s moving forward. She’s supposed to be moving forward too. Why can’t she get any traction?)

She needs something to _do._

Then Cheedo gets sick.

“Where is she?” Toast demands, standing. Spare parts spill off of her lap. She pays them no mind.

“In quarantine room with Mel,” Capable says miserably. “She collapsed-”

Furiosa’s legs are moving before Capable can finish.

“Furiosa, _wait-!_ ”

But she’s already gone. She takes the stairs two at a time, mind racing, squealing like tires right before they catch, her wheels are _always_ spinning, she has to get to Cheedo, she doesn’t know what she’s planning to do when she gets there but she won’t lose another-

The quarantine room is in sight when someone snags her arm and yanks her back. Out of pure instinct, Furiosa twists and swings hard, but her stump whistles through empty air as the person ducks.

She registers Max’s face and just manages to stop herself from striking again.

“Let me go,” she snarls. She jerks at her arm but he holds firm.

“Don’t go in there,” he says, low and urgent. “Mm. _Don’t_.”

It’s then that she registers the panic on his face. The wild panic from the rig has returned.

“I can’t lose another one,” Furiosa says, noticing with vague surprise that her breaths are heaving in ragged gasps, that her heart is beating like war drums. “I’m supposed to _protect_ them, I-”

“I know. I know,” he mutters, and when he reaches for her, Furiosa doesn’t stop him. He pulls her in his arms, very gently, very slowly. Furiosa lets her head drop onto his shoulder and tries to control her trembling.

The next thing she remembers, they’re sitting on the floor outside the quarantine room, leaning against the wall. Furiosa’s head is still on Max’s shoulder, and he is humming quietly, the low vibrations traveling from his bones to hers, settling her. Her eyelids are crusted with dried liquid, her head fuzzy and neck achy like maybe she’s just woken up. She thinks about stirring, but even though her leg is prickling from sitting too long, she doesn’t want to move.

“Why are you here?” she asks before she can lose her nerve.

The humming stops and she regrets speaking.

Then: “Girls won’t let me leave,” Max says, and it startles a laugh out of her. The sound is old and rusty, but she wouldn’t mind taking it out of the garage, polishing it up a little, and using it more often.

He’s so relaxed. She can feel it where her head is on his shoulder and her stump is intertwined with his arm. Something must have happened over the year they were apart, something that changed him. She tries to figure out how to ask, and finally settles on the inadequate, “Why?”

Max shifts a little, and she begins to shift too, to give him more space, but he settles his head atop hers. She supposes that means he doesn’t mind if she stays.

“I, mm. Didn’t know how not to leave,” he says, and she understands, remembers that day, meeting his eyes as he pushed through the crowd and knowing that he had to go. “But it wasn’t the same. Felt . . .” He makes a vague gesture at his head. “Crazy.”

“Kami-crazy,” Furiosa murmurs.

He hums agreement. “Kami-crazy. Couldn’t settle. It was a hard day. Lot of hard days. Lost track of everything ‘cept bullet count.”

And Furiosa understands that too.

“I was in Gastown, working on my car. Heard about a Citadel vehicle stopped on the road. Thought you might need help, didn’t even, mm. Think.” He makes a few noises, like the memory is making him fidgety and nervous again. “Now ‘m here.”

But none of this is answering Furiosa’s confusion. She lifts her head and sits forward to look at him, trying to understand. He looks back at her, and there are hints of the animal that he was, but not many.

“You’re not kami-crazy now,” she says, trying to explain.

Max blinks at her. “No,” he agrees.

“How?”

He frowns a little. “Safety,” he says, as if it’s obvious.

“Safety?” Furiosa asks, bewildered. “You were a blood bag here.”

He frowns more, and she immediately regrets bringing it up. “Not here,” he says. “This is a different place. You did that.”

She sighs and leans back against the wall. “The girls did that. I did what they said.”

“Mm.” This grunt sounds annoyed, and he nudges her. “You.”

Furiosa sighs and shakes her head. “Stop.”

She’s a tool. She’s a weapon. First Joe used her, then Angharad, now the girls. And she much prefers the girls; she knows that they do good things. They use her to create and protect instead of conquer and destroy. They repair her broken pieces and soften her sharp edges. But they can’t change what she is any more than she herself can.

Max is not pleased. He nudges her again. “We are not things here,” he says.

Furiosa looks at him, annoyed herself now. “I know,” she snaps.

“No,” Max says, turning his body to look at her. He points a finger at his chest. “I am not a blood bag.” The finger turns to her. “You are not a tool.”

Max looks at her with serious eyes and speaks as if his words are utter truth and it is crucial that she understand. He speaks as if he’ll never speak again. “We don’t belong to them. We don’t belong to anyone. We are, mm. We are _not_ things.”


	6. Chapter 6

The room swims into view - low stone ceiling, walls hung with Vuvalini-style tapestries and blankets, a makeshift door of sheet metal hammered flat. Cheedo’s in the quarantine room.

She sits up slowly. Her brain feels thick and slow, her body somehow both frigid and boiling. There’s a skin of water on the table beside her. She forced herself to drink all of it, despite the ache in her throat.

“You’re awake, eh?” says a voice as fragile as wet paper, and Cheedo blinks with bleary eyes over at the other bed, where Mel is sitting up and leaning against the wall, buried in blankets.

Cheedo checks to make sure none of her sisters are there.

“Am I dying?” she asks.

Mel hacks out a laugh, which promptly turns into a cough that wracks her whole body. Cheedo winces.

“You?” she finally manages. “Not likely. Me, though, I’ve already got one foot out the door.”

“No, you can’t,” Cheedo says, a reflex. “We need you. You haven’t taught me everything.”

Mel shakes her head. “I’ve lived a long time, child, I could never teach you everything.”

“But- but-” To her frustration, Cheedo finds tears welling up in her eyes. “How can I look after everyone by myself?”

Mel sighs. “Child, I’ve been trying to tell you. You can’t.”

“Who else is gonna do it?” Cheedo snaps. “All my life, all I wanted was for my little brothers to have food and water and clothes. The Imperator came and bought me and my brothers because we were shiny full-lives, and all we had to do was- was-” Wet sobs interrupt her impotent rage, and Cheedo hits the blankets, furious and miserable. “My brothers died chasing me, because when Furiosa took me I went. All I wanted was to look after them.”

Cheedo looks up at Mel, half-blind with tears. “There are people with no family down there, Melanie. There are kids with no family. If I don’t feed them and teach them and care for them, nobody will. I killed my brothers, I can’t kill them too-”

“That’s _enough_ , child,” Mel says, voice hard. “Now I don’t know what kind of mother would abandon her daughter like yours did. In our clan she would’ve been snapped. But that doesn’t make it your job to care for every child on this Earth, ‘specially when you’re just a child yourself.” Her voice softens, just a little. “You were dealt a hard hand, same as everyone else born in this age. You did the best you could. You can’t save everyone.”

“But people are dying,” Cheedo says, voice small.

“Yeah, they are. And I’ll never say stop fighting, or stop caring. But what about that person?” she asks, pointing a crooked finger at Cheedo’s chest. “What about her, huh?”

Cheedo opens her mouth, then closes it. She has no answer.

“She comes first. Always. She might try to spend her life looking after others, but there won’t be many others helped if her life is real short. Hm?” Mel lowers her finger and burrows back into her blankets. “I taught you as much as I could in the time that we had. You learned well. Soon you’re gonna be on your own, so if you got any questions, best get ‘em out now.”

Furiosa and Max don’t move for a long time. Eventually, Max’s breaths smooth out and deepen, his body relaxing against the wall. Furiosa can’t bring herself to sleep. She feels- different.

More than anything, right now, she wants to see Mel and Cheedo.

She eases herself away from Max very carefully. As she stands and stretches, she looks at his face and feels another strange lump in her throat. She doesn’t know why she reacts this way to seeing him, but she knows that she wants him this way all the time. Face devoid of anxiety, stress, fear, anger. Feeling so safe that he falls asleep in a hallway. Feeling safe with _her._

Furiosa’s not quite sure to do with that train of thought so she lets it go and turns toward the quarantine room.

Inside is not as bad as she feared. There is no scent of death or vomit. The room is a little warm and humid, but Mel and Cheedo are tucked in beds with veritable mounds of blankets tucked around them. Cheedo is sleeping, but there’s color in her face and she breathes easy.

“She’ll be fine,” says Mel quietly.

Furiosa picks up the waste bucket to avoid responding and nudges it out the door to be emptied later. She moves around the room, taking a new bucket from the closet, refilling the skins on the table between their beds, setting out dried fruit and nuts from their stores.

“You can’t avoid death, child,” Mel says matter-of-factly.

Furiosa clenches her jaw. “I know that,” she says.

Mel’s expression softens. “Too well,” she agrees. She watches Furiosa move for a few moments. Then: “Do you ever miss your mother?”

Furiosa tenses, then tries to pretend she didn’t. “Yes.” She rearranges Cheedo’s blankets to cover her feet.

“Which one?”

Furiosa’s gut is swirling like a sandstorm. She doesn’t want to have this conversation.

But at the same time, she does. “All of them,” she answers. “All the time.”

Mel nods a little, like this is no less than she expected. “They would be proud of you, you know.”

Pain blazes through Furiosa’s skull, hot and sudden. “Don’t say that.”

“They would.”

“Don’t _say_ that!”

Cheedo stirs and Furiosa freezes, but it’s too late. She’s sitting up.

“You woke her,” Mel says, vague reproach in her tone.

“Another in a long list of things to feel guilty about,” Furiosa spits.

“Don’t feel bad,” Cheedo mumbles, yawning. “I’m okay.”

Furiosa doesn’t have the strength to storm out of the room, but she’s not sure she has the strength to stay. “Cheedo-” She shuts her mouth with a click of her teeth.

“Hm?” Cheedo rubs her eyes and tries to focus, but it’s clear she’s exhausted. “Oh, Furiosa. You shouldn’t be in here. You might get sick.”

“I came to- I-” She sits down hard on the edge of Mel’s bed and forces herself to meet Cheedo’s eyes. “I was worried you were going to die, when I heard you were sick.”

“It’s okay. Mel says I’m going to be fine.” She smiles, gentle and so very kind, and it’s so bright that Furiosa has to look at the ground.

Joe was a fool. The V8 fanatics were fools. Only a heart like that could be capable of grabbing the sun.

She forges on, eyes pinned to the ground. “And I needed you to know that I . . . I wouldn’t have thrown you off the lift. Never. Not if Joe put a gun to my head.”

There’s a long moment of silence.

“I trust you, Furiosa.” Furiosa looks up. Cheedo sits with easy grace, expression calm and earnest. “If you were sure that it was the right choice to throw anyone who had been to the ground off of the lift, then I would have let you. But you weren’t. If you had been, you never would have changed your mind.” She points with two fingers at Furiosa’s forehead, four hundred days free of black grease. “Joe was in your head. It’s okay. He gets in mine, too, sometimes.”

Mel reaches out and rubs Furiosa’s back. She has memories of that, in the Green Place, mothers touching her back. How can touches of kindness _hurt?_ “We love you,” Mel says, like it’s a reminder of another fact that Furiosa somehow didn’t know. “And we will always love you, no matter who hurts you. That’s what family is.”

“I killed my family,” Furiosa whispers. “The Many Mothers- they’re dead because of _me_ -”

“I don’t want to hear that,” Mel says, sharp. “The Citadel was our best chance, same as you. We knew the risks. We chose our path. And those of us that made it wouldn’t have made it without you, so you _never_ think that again.” She huffs a little, and Furiosa realizes that the pain keening in her own chest must be echoed and amplified a thousand times over in Mel’s. “Besides, the Vuvalini aren’t a species. We’re a clan. So long as our girls are alive, the Many Mothers live on. I can’t believe I have to explain this to you. Nonsense.”

“Enough of that,” Cheedo says, throwing Mel a truly impressive glare, and Furiosa feels a flash of pride. How very fitting that the man who called her Fragile is dead in the dust, and Cheedo lives on, stronger than he ever was. “The point is that you’re forgiven, Furiosa. Always and completely.”

 _Forgiveness_.

Could it be so easy?


	7. Chapter 7

It is not so easy.

Mel dies in her sleep that night, and Furiosa feels numb and heavy, even though she’d expected it. Their supplies run dry and none of their crops are ready for harvest and she wonders if this is it, the short-lived new life of the Green Place; but Cheedo heals, Capable’s faith stays strong, and sure enough, the sickness breaks within the next few days. Furiosa and Toast make a supply run and the whole Citadel celebrates, each in their own way. The War Boys play games and craft tiny inventions out of scrap, free now to build what they want to build with the supplies left over. The milkers walk up to the terraces to see the sky; the terrace workers walk down into the Citadel to visit friends they never get to see. The girls walk among them, traveling from group to group, making themselves known and loved in a way that Joe never could have.

Almond takes her first steps one hundred forty days after the quarantine breaks. She walks right into Max’s arms. The girls have their own celebration that night.

“Just for family,” Dag says.

It ends up being Capable, Toast, Cheedo, Dag, Ria, Almond, a War Pup called Siphon that Toast has all but adopted, two milkers (Catch and Umber), three kitchen workers (Yarrow, Pride, and Quirk), two terrace workers (Deft and Verdant), Furiosa, and Max. Furiosa mostly stays at the back of the room, gnawing on an apple core, but every now and then one of the girls will flit over and offer her more food and drink, and there is nothing more that Furiosa wants.

Max wanders over with Almond in his arms, and Furiosa stifles a laugh. Ever since Dag found out that he is not only good with her, but that he loves her like the sun, she pawns her infant off at every opportunity.

“Regretting your choice to stay?” she asks as he settles beside her, trying not to let the faint anxiety bleed into her tone.

He sees right through her, smiles a little, and shakes his head.

“Safety,” she recalls, toasting him with her cup of water. “The Citadel is safety, even if it has crying babies.” Max humphs at this assessment of Almond and shifts her in her arms. Despite the noise of the party, she is dozing, exhausted from her first day as a biped.

“Not the Citadel,” he says. Furiosa frowns at him. “Hm. You. Feel safe with you.”

The admission warms her chest.

Redemption is a tricky thing. The first time Furiosa ever said it out loud was in the cab of the War Rig, to Max, and she’d had no idea what it meant or what it looked like, only that she wanted it. She’d killed Joe, she’d brought the girls to a new Green Place, she’d helped them rebuild it from the ground up. Still she didn’t feel redeemed. Four hundred days, she had no help left to give, and she was unredeemed. Maybe redemption was for people, not for her. Not after all she’d done.

But Furiosa is not a thing. She has sisters. A family who love her. She has Max, which- She’s not quite sure  _ what _ he is to her, but the fact that the quarantine is down and he is still here makes her feel a trickle of possibility. A thread of hope, for what could be.

She still doesn’t know whether she has redemption, but she has hope. She has forgiveness. And maybe, for now, that’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be something completely different than it is. It was supposed to be just hurt/comfort, centered around Furiosa as she tries to define who she is without the Citadel. Somewhere in the back of my head, I wanted to expand Cheedo's character a little beyond what she had been in the film, but somehow she became so much more than that. She elbowed her way in there and reminded me of all my complex emotions around climate change. Mostly, that I want to save the world all by myself, but I can't. It doesn't work that way. We give what we can, while trying not to lose ourselves in the process. It's a delicate balance.
> 
> This fic was written to support Australia. Please help them if you can. 
> 
> Exo


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